


no good for me

by hawksonfire



Series: Marvel Bingo 2019 [6]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Marvel Bingo 2019, and it would not go away, have a thing, i had this idea a one in the morning, so here you go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 05:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19222540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawksonfire/pseuds/hawksonfire
Summary: Bucky and Clint are no good for each other.It doesn't exactly stop them.





	no good for me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Marvel Bingo Square B2 - Canon Divergence.
> 
>  
> 
> i had this idea at one in the morning and it wouldn't go away, so here. i hope you enjoy because i sorta had fun torturing the boys this time?

“You’re no good for me,” Clint says, watching Bucky walk away.

“I know,” Bucky says quietly, and then he’s gone. That’s okay. Clint’s used to people leaving.

His mom left, then Barney, then Coulson - and now Pietro, whose absence is fresh in his mind, as present as the glass shards that Clint can feel digging into his calves.

One more person leaving him won’t make a difference.

~~~~~~

“You ain’t good for me, Barton,” Bucky says, and he watches a series of emotions play over Clint’s face - he’s always been easy to read.

“I ain’t good at all,” Clint says, and he probably meant it to come off self-deprecating and snarky - but instead, he just sounds sad.

And as Bucky drifts off to sleep in the cryotube in Shuri’s lab and then jolts awake five seconds (six months) later, he has to swallow the “Maybe I don’t need good right now,” because Clint’s not there. Steve is, and Bucky figures that’s that, then.

~~~~~~

“Clint, he...” Steve hesitates. “He did a lot of bad things after the Snap. Not so sure he’s a good man. Not anymore.”

“Yeah, well,” Bucky’s mouth twists into a wry grin that holds no amusement, “I’m no good man either. But that didn’t stop you from tryin’ to save me.”

“That’s different, Buck,” Steve says.

“How? You’d do anythin’ for me, and I’d do anythin’ for Clint, so how is it different?”

Steve doesn’t have an answer to that.

~~~~~~

“We’re not good for each other, Nat,” Clint says, his eyes following Barnes from across the expanse of the gym. “Hell, I’m not good period.”

“Neither is he,” Natasha says, and Clint swings around to defend Bucky, a retort already burning at his lips - it turns to ash in his mouth when he sees her smirking.

She’s always known him better than he knows himself, and he knows that he should listen to what she isn’t saying - he also knows she isn’t surprised when he unhooks his arms from around the railing and stalks out of the gym.

~~~~~~

Bucky doesn’t even know what he said. All he knows as he staggers back, arms pinwheeling as he tries to regain his balance, is that his nose is broken and throbbing and bleeding and that Clint Barton is the cause.

He doesn’t apologize. Just stands there, knuckles bruised and dripping with Bucky’s blood, staring at him. Bucky stares back - watching, waiting, while his nose heals. It pops back into place and the sting makes his eyes water.

By the time he clears them, Clint’s gone without a trace - the only signs he was ever there a small pool of blood on the floor and the bruise on Bucky’s face.

~~~~~~

After Clint broke Bucky’s nose, things went back to normal - well, as normal as they can be nowadays. Steve had cornered Clint and threatened him if he ever hurt Bucky like that again, and Clint hadn’t even been able to dredge up the guilt that Steve had expected him to feel.

So he had just stood there, and let Steve hiss and swear and threaten and curse at him until he wore himself out, and he had done it all with a blank face. “You’re not even sorry,” Steve had said, astonished, and he had shoved past Clint so hard that Clint still has the purple bruise on his shoulder, even four days later.

He pokes at it sometimes, letting the pain throb throughout his arm, letting it radiate through his chest and back - sometimes the only way he can fall asleep is by squeezing until it hurts and letting the  _pulse pulse pulse_ of the blood flowing through it lull him to sleep.

~~~~~~

 _Is anyone good for anyone anymore?_ Bucky thinks, watching the muscles in Clint’s back shift as he fires his bow.

After all they’ve seen, after all they’ve done - can anyone be considered good anymore? Bucky thinks on that for the five hours it takes Clint to stop firing his bow and leave the range.

He takes the bow with him but when Bucky goes down to check, he finds little bloody smears on the arrow shafts.

~~~~~~

“You’re no good for me,” Clint says softly, watching Bucky’s face settle and go slack. Clint’s got no right to be here, he lost his right to watch Bucky sleep years ago.

“You left me,” comes out next on a sigh, and Clint’s not surprised, really. His abandonment issues aren’t exactly a new thing, and they got stirred up pretty bad when Bucky left after Pietro. After Bucky went back into cryo in Wakanda. After Bucky woke up from cryo and didn’t want to see him.

“I’m sorry,” comes out last - and Clint doesn’t even know what he’s sorry for. It could be anything. It could be everything. It could be nothing, and he’s just saying it because he thinks he should.

He ghosts a kiss over Bucky’s forehead, because he’s never been able to deny himself Bucky - he’s gone before Bucky’s eyes finish opening.

~~~~~~

“We’re no good for each other,” Bucky says softly, twirling the tuft of hair at the nape of Clint’s neck.

“Never have been,” Clint agrees, his breath warm on Bucky’s neck.

“Maybe we’re no good for each other,” Bucky says, and he feels Clint’s arms tighten around his torso, “But maybe we should try to be.”

Clint looks at him, eyes searching Bucky’s face. He’s not sure for what, exactly, but if this is what Clint needs. Bucky goes against every single goddamn ounce of his training - as Bucky Barnes, the guy from the ‘40s who never let anyone see him while making them all think they did; as The Asset, trained and tortured and forced into learning how to keep its emotions off of its face until there are no emotions to keep off at all; as _BuckyTheSoldier_ ** _whoami_** , screaming and clawing and fighting his way back to being a person again, training himself to understand emotions and how they work so he can feel all of them in their entirety because he hasn’t felt anything in so long - Bucky lets all of that fall away.

He lets everything he’s feeling, everything he’s _been_ feeling since he first took a step away from Clint and not towards him, every single thought and emotion and microexpression - he lets it all show on his face, and it must be a lot because Clint’s eyes widen and he starts to shake and Bucky just holds him as he falls apart like he wish Clint could have done for him.

~~~~~~

“You’re perfect,” Clint moans when Bucky tosses him the last strip of bacon. _For me_ , he doesn’t say. They’re not there yet. They might not ever be. Clint’s close, though - and he’s not as scared of it as he used to be.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

~~~~~~

“You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Bucky says happily, pulling Clint towards him and burrowing into his warmth.

He means it, which is only sort of a surprise.

He’s always meant it - which comes as a bit more of a shock, sure, but after a minute the truth of it settles into his bones, and it’s like Bucky’s been living with it his whole life.

~~~~~~

“You’re no good for me,” Clint starts, and standing at the stove, Bucky’s whole body tenses.

“I thought we were past that,” Bucky says quietly, his voice hurt and near broken.

“You’re no good for me,” Clint says again, and this time, when Bucky turns around and sees him down on one knee his whole body tenses for a whole different reason. “Wanna be no good for me for the rest of our lives?”


End file.
